Blue Lotus
by SnarkyTheClown
Summary: A short one-shot that I wrote on a lark. Rated R just in case. Read it, it'll only take a minute or two!
1. Sunset

Okay, this was a random one-shot that I wrote for no real reason. It's super short and has no actual plot…it's also completely (and I do mean completely) different from what I usually write.

I appreciate reviews and warn you now that this is not intended to be literary genius.

I own nothing except my trusty laptop.

A note about the title: the blue lotus symbolizes birth, death, and resurrection in Egyptian iconography.

--Aimes

* * *

It exists within me, struggling for release. Once, when I was a foolish child, I'd loosed it. I thought it an imaginary friend, wanting to play. So I let it out in the woods behind our summer home to take shape for me. It would do anything for me.

But not for free.

Nothing is ever free.

It claimed its reward. No more chirping birds or chirruping squirrels. I screamed whenever my parents tried to go back to that place, though I knew it couldn't hurt me. It needed me; we are not separate. I destroyed that forest and loved it.

Now I sit in the office of a doddering old fool and listen to him ramble.

"They call your kind Deathmaidens," he reveals kindly, twinkling. My gaze is placid. I know what they call my kind. They are wrong.

I am no servant of death.

I am Death itself.

I must wonder what he truly wants, because everyone wants something. I am tempted to bargain with him, to become his Angel of Death. I have done it for others; it would not be the first time for me. Before I knew better, I let the foolish Muggles use my 'talents' for the 'safety of the people.' But perhaps I've always known better. Perhaps I simply did not care.

I sense death in all its forms and I do not judge. Violent death, quiet death, the thousand deaths of a broken heart. I crave it all. I am an addict and this is my substance to abuse. I am capable of feeling each individual cell die and it intoxicates me. Better than drugs, better than sex, better than life.

Does it make me a monster?

I operate within the confines of society. I do not kill, though I have helped death along. When my mother was dying of cancer, she wanted release so badly. I could barely control my need. She felt no pain; I eased her passing.

I should be an executioner. The death I deal is easy, enjoyable even. Better than drugs, better than sex, better than life. Who could resist?

My attention is drawn to the other man. Tall, dark, brooding. I am know him; my counterpart. We are diametrically opposed. Matter and antimatter. Would we annihilate each other? Or would one of us remain? A question men have pondered for centuries.

He is the reason for my summons.

My angelic looks disguise a demon. What does his demonic appearance hide?

"They call your kind Saela. Life," I say, interrupting the old man.

"I know what they call my kind."

"It calls to me. I've felt it since I entered this place. I have restrained myself for seven years."

"We have both shown restraint," he counters, and I know it to be true. The force within him calls him to imbue me with the life he so easily generates even as my spirit cries out to destroy him.

"If we were to proceed, I might kill you," I warn.

"And vice versa. What is Life to a Deathmaiden?"

The old man senses the coming storm and leaves us. Perhaps not the fool I thought him to be.

This angel of light comes to me and caresses my face. I feel his energy building and my own energy responds with vigor. We anticipate the challenge.

Antithetical elements: he is the darkness, the perpetrator of evil deeds; lonely, hard, lethal. His darkest corners would make even the strongest man cringe.

I am light, sweetness, the giver of kindness and knowledge. My idealism melts the coldness of reality.

But I am Death and he is Life. Matter and antimatter, but which am I?

I rise to face him, Death seeping from my pores. It burns him and invigorates him. I feel his Life stroking me and slicing me.

It surrounds us: an infinite feedback loop.

I kill him and he resurrects me so I can kill him again.

We stand there for an eternity before breaking, calling it back into ourselves. I am sated, gorged on the Death. The pleasure was almost unbearable and I am shaking in his arms in the aftermath. Or is he shaking in my arms? We tremble together and I sense the constant craving within me relent and fade.

I cannot remember a time when I did not crave Death.

He lifts me in his arms and carries me from the tallest tower to the darkest dungeon. I do not protest as he sets me on his bed and wraps me in his arms.

"You are mine for the rest of eternity," he rumbles.

"I am yours until you cannot sustain me," I counter.

He does not reply, nor does he state its corollary: He is mine till I no longer sustain him.

In our perverse universe, we sleep peacefully.


	2. Sunrise

They never understood. Idiots, the lot of them. Complete morons.

They thought themselves great, the heroes of their age. They defied Voldemort and lived to tell the tale. Or did they?

They thought me a coward and a traitor. Dunderheads, all.

I was never tried for my crimes.

My life was my trial.

Life.

I suppose that's the point of it, really. He felt no guilt sending me to the wolves because I could undo my mistakes.

In his mind.

He did not understand. The doddering old fool.

It is better to simply kill than to kill and resurrect. The resurrection is pain and anger—the resurrection is worse than death. Because who would willingly give up heaven for this hell we call earth?

No one has ever thanked me for bringing them back.

I feel it within me, bubbling up, surging to the surface. Begging to resurrect the plants, the animals, the ghosts. To poison everything with the life it offers. That I offer.

Years ago, before I'd understood what it meant, I'd brought my sister back. I was eight years old and she'd been thrown from her horse and killed instantly. Before I could react, it swelled out of me and poured into her. She was alive before anyone else realized she was dead.

But she knew. She never forgave me for what I did and she died by her own hand mere months afterward.

She did not thank me for bringing her back.

Now I stand, blending into the shadows of his office. All I have done for him and it is time to claim my prize. I pull the darkness around me hoping to suffocate the light from within.

"They call your kind Deathmaidens," he tells her patronizingly. As though she didn't realize. Even now, he does not comprehend.

She does not respond to him; she watches me as I watch her.

"They call your kind Saela, Life," she notes, ignoring the old man's patter.

"I know what they call my kind."

She is not a Deathmaiden; she is death. I feel it within her and I want it. The ultimate challenge: resurrecting death itself. In centuries past, we would have been worshipped as divinity. Perhaps we are divinity. I feel her power; I worship her.

The anticipation is almost overwhelming.

"It calls to me. I've felt it since I entered this place. I've shown great restraint."

"We have both shown restraint," I correct her, and we have. I felt her from the moment she was born: my opposite, my counterpart, my angel of death. Every moment of every day that she has spent in this place has taxed me, pushing the boundaries of my considerable control. She understands.

"If we were to proceed, I might kill you," she warns. What a blessing it would be to I resurrect myself?

Would I thank myself if I did?

"And vice versa," I respond to her. "What is Life to a Deathmaiden?"

The old man leaves us without comment. He senses his own mortality here as her death surrounds him, mingling with my life. If she were to kill him, this beautiful angel, would he want me bring him back?

Both our lives have built inexorably to this point in time and space. Everything that came before was nothing.

The eternal battle between fire and ice, good and evil, darkness and light rages between us.

Which am I?

I am drawn to her; so gentle and sweet, so deadly. My hand reaches to caress her face and I begin to lose myself as it builds within me to heights I've never imagined.

She rises to meet me, nearly trembling from the energy and anticipation building within her.

Life turns to death turns to life and we exist in limbo. My light is drowning her darkness as it blankets my light and we find each other in the shades of grey.

A perpetual war of bliss and carnage; redemption.

It lasts only a second before the energy begins to fade and we call the Others back into ourselves. She is shaking in my arms as I tremble in hers.

The Life rests within me, sated and intoxicated and terrified. It has stopped begging for the first time in years.

I lift her, light as a feather, and descend into the darkness. I place her reverently on my bed and wrap her in my arms, claiming her.

"You are mine for all eternity," I whisper. And she is.

"I am yours till you no longer sustain me," she murmurs in reply. I smile in amusement. So brilliant but she does not realize that in all the universe I was created for her alone and she was created for me.

She is mine as I am hers. She will learn.

I sleep contentedly.

The universe has paid me my due.


End file.
